Policy of permanence and success in the higher education: teachers perspectives about failure

Abstract

The failure in higher education is a research object of this article. It was assumed that the teacher's perception about the failure influences the intentionality of pedagogical action and policies of permanence and success of students. The investigation was based on the quantitative-qualitative model for collecting, organizing and analyzing data. In the document collection, the class diaries of the IFB's Spanish course of the period 2013-2016 (which corresponds to a formative cycle) were analyzed with the intention of identifying quantities and indexes of failure in subjects and academic semesters, representing the specific objective the research. From the diaries it was inferred that failure did not maintain a preponderant pattern. In the field collection, interviews were carried out with the teachers of the course, seeking to understand their perceptions regarding failure, which constituted the general objective of the investigation. The corpus concerning the perception of teachers was submitted to a software of analysis of textual data and pointed out the existence of three categories regarding teachers' perceptions about failure: teacher-student relationship and academic success; motivators of failure and pedagogic sense; and reflections on the pedagogic practice as for failure. Stands out the influence of interpersonal relationships as a factor promoting success and the use of coping strategies that are defined as policies to be adopted for permanence and success, such as: individualized service; monitoring; introduction to teaching and research; student assistance grants; pedagogical monitoring; study spaces and investment in teacher education.